Hammerpoint Interactive's controversial zombie survival game The War Z has been removed from Steam. Earlier this morning we reported on the very vocal and public outcry of consumers who say that The War Z was falsely advertised by its developers and that it was missing features promised in the game's original product page - which was later revised. You can get the rundown on all those issues in this news story.

While the product page for the game is still on Steam, the game is no longer available for purchase at this time. In a statement Valve said that it was a mistake to allow the game to be released on Steam before it had time to properly test it to make certain that the game met their standards.

"From time to time a mistake can be made and one was made by prematurely issuing a copy of War Z for sale via Steam," Valve said in an emailed statement to Kotaku. "We apologize for this and have temporary removed the sale offering of the title until we have time to work with the developer and have confidence in a new build. Those who purchase the game and wish to continue playing it via Steam may do so. Those who purchased the title via Steam and are unhappy with what they received may seek a refund by creating a ticket at our support site here."

When the game does finally become available again chances are that fans who bought it when it was first released on Monday will be very vocal in telling the Steam community about their experiences with the game and its developers, who some would argue didn't do a very good job of placating and appeasing customers who had strong complaints and concerns...

they truly need to test more often then, and longer. Dead Islands developer version should never have been released either, and it stuck out like a very sore thumb. soo.. yeah.. either someones extremely lazy over there and needs a good kick to the curb, or Valve needs to start getting their shit in gear.

on the plus, at least Valve will take action on this sort of thing. most companies would simply shrug and tell you your out of luck. if theres anything i do like about the digital distribution companies is they (so far) are more than willing to see that things they sell aren't trash. whereas say, wal mart, would just apologize to you in false context, then restock the game anyways.

I think it probably comes to being overly trustful of developers to hold up their end, I definetely agree that they could do more on checking products and I was even surprised to see it show up there as I wasn't even aware it was being released. Nearly every other product on steam is up for like a month before the game is released.

Awesome. Boyfriend was raging about it yesterday, and even I found it odd that it made it to the top-seller chart on the first day.

Apparently, that was caused by reddit users defrauding the game, basically purchasing the game then canceling the payment so it'd get boosted to the top while they made a ruckus about how bad a game it is. That's in addition to the rumor that the company itself might've purchased copies of its own game, as well.

Kind of curious where you're getting the reddit users bit from - haven't been able to find it myself. All that I've found is articles saying that people are getting banned solely for complaining on the Steam forum, that large amounts of people have been (apparently falsely) accused of hacking and banned by Hammerpoint, that they increased the respawn timer and added a pay-to-respawn-instantly option about the same time the game became available on Steam, and that they changed the Terms of Service to include a no-refunds clause.

Actually, I guess "All that I've found" is a bit of a misnomer - that's some pretty scary stuff.